Naruto's BFF
by Lucillia
Summary: Due to an unfortunate choice of words, Madara gets a little stalker before the Massacre.
1. Naruto Makes a Friend

Madara stalked silently through the crappy apartment. He had little sympathy for the child who lived here, as when he was the boy's age he'd been living in a freaking tent. As far as he was concerned, the brat's living situation was much better than his had been as both the roof _and_ the floor didn't leak and he was surrounded by four solid walls rather than a bunch of canvas that was liable to blow over at the worst possible moment, especially when the bratling Izuna decided to pull up half of the stakes as a prank. Itachi was out on a mission, and what the little whelp didn't know wouldn't hurt him especially since he was going to make it look like one of the pathetic villagers had done this. He gently shook the child awake, wanting to see fear in the bright blue eyes that were so much like his damnable father's as the final moment came. As he did so, he wracked his brain for something suitably intimidating to say.

"And now my little friend, it is time for you to..." he started when the child was finally aware of his presence.

Wait? Why was he staring at the ceiling? Why was he having a hard time breathing?

"...hadafriendbefore! We'llbebestfriendsforever! Andever! Andever! Andever!" shrieked a rather happy sounding child who was currently latched onto him. The boy's grip seemed to - if that was even possible - tighten with each "Ever".

Snap. Crunch.

Holy Shit! He had to get out of here now!

Madara lay panting on a rooftop. That had been a close one. That kid had broke three, count em, three ribs and punctured his left lung, and the worst part was that the child hadn't even been trying to harm him. As far as he was concerned, as soon as he recovered, This. Had. Never. Happened. He had kept his promise to the Itachi brat, and never went anywhere near the Kyuubi Jinchuriki.

Meanwhile, the Kyuubi growled in his cage. By the time he'd become aware of that damnable Uchiha's presence, the man had already gone and there was nothing he could do about it. The faint whiff of Piss-Your-Pants-And-Not-Even-Notice-It terror he caught when he tuned into the brat's senses and the brat's - who had yet to learn the meaning of "gentle" since the unfortunate incident with Mr. Tibbles was still three months off - whining over the disappearance of his new "Best friend" gave the fox an interesting and somewhat amusing idea. There was a great deal of risk involved, but oh, the potential rewards. If there was one lesson he'd learned from the Uzumaki he'd been forcibly housed in, it was this: Revenge was a dish best served with an unusual presentation.

**"Hey Kid."** the Kyuubi said, as he did something to get the child's attention. Usually this only worked when the kid was asleep or unconscious, as when he was awake you could run an entire brass band through the boy's head and he wouldn't even notice. It worked now however.

"What?" the boy asked as he looked around his room for the source of the voice.

**"How would you like to always be able to find your friend so you could show him how much you care about him?" **the Kyuubi asked, barely holding back a snicker. Hey, he was rather short on entertainment, and this promised to be rather amusing if nothing else. He was reasonably certain he wouldn't die, because that asshat with the eyes seemed to be a one trick pony, and would more than likely pull him out of the brat before murdering him.


	2. Cops and Invisible Underwear Inhabitants

Madara lay in the hospital bed in Konoha's civilian hospital, slightly woozy on pain medication and dreading the arrival of the police officer who would undoubtedly be a Uchiha, and therefore would be able to see through the light Genjutsu he was using to keep the doctors and nurses from being able to remember what he looked like. Apparently, injuries such as the ones he had arrived with had to be reported to the authorities, which in Konoha meant the Konoha Military Police who handled civilian crime as well as crimes committed by or on non-ANBU Shinobi. He'd been forced to go to the hospital when the punctured lung he'd gotten when the Jinchuriki had broken a few of his ribs had decided to collapse, nearly killing him before he practically collapsed on the hospital's doorstep. This was really going to play havoc with his plans.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting while he vaguely drifted in and out, the police officer arrived. It was a Uchiha as he had feared. The bored looking man didn't even look at him before he pulled out a notebook however.

"Mr. Nakamura, can you tell me how you came to be injured?" the Uchiha asked, still not looking at him.

"I...I, um, fell down a flight of stairs." Madara said, unable to believe how his luck was holding out so far.

"Okay." the man said as he made a note in the little notebook before snapping it shut and turning to leave with a "Get well soon Mr. Nakamura." that was obviously a formality.

What an asshole. No wonder people around here hated the police. He'd have to get his revenge on his clan soon, before someone else snapped and killed the lot of them like he'd done to his father when he'd learned that he'd been named "Spots" after one of the man's childhood pets.

&!&!&

"Naruto, why are you asking me what to give to someone who is in the hospital?" Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage asked his successor's son who had once again burst into his office unannounced.

"The invisible person who lives in my underwear said you'd know." Naruto replied.

There was a story behind this, and the story was that Naruto had been looking vaguely in the direction of a small pile of dirty underwear when he had first heard the Kyuubi. When he looked around and didn't see anyone, he concluded that the person who was talking to him was invisible. It had just been coincidence that Naruto was looking back at the small pile of underwear when the Kyuubi had spoken again, but Naruto hadn't known that. Instead, Naruto somehow came to the rather erroneous conclusion that whoever was speaking to him was in the pile of underwear.

Suffice to say, Danzo had a rather interesting morning after going over the report that a Root operative who had decided to inform him that Naruto appeared to have learned a ninja technique from some underwear which he had been conversing with had sent him. The hapless Root operative in question found himself being tranqed and dragged to Root's Psych Nin much to his bemusement.

"The WHAT?" Hiruzen asked after nearly choking on his pipe.

/*^*\

Author's note: The Kun reading for the kanji character that means mottled, striped, and freckle is madara. Apparently, Madara's parents had hated him.


	3. Of Cops and Vegetable Gift Baskets

Madara woke up from a rather pleasant drug-induced nap to find a massive basket of vegetables walking into his room followed by a silver haired young man in his early twenties who bore enough of a resemblance to Senju Tobirama that he was already itching to strangle him.

It was a little known fact, but this had been the year that truly cemented Naruto's dislike of vegetables. While shopkeepers didn't sell Naruto their top-quality goods, they weren't dumb enough to sell him things that were outright spoiled after what happened to the first guy who did so. Usually, Naruto ended up getting things that were approaching the end of their shelf life. Because of this, Naruto didn't really have any feelings about vegetables one way or another, other than to occasionally complain that they didn't last long enough.

For Naruto's seventh birthday, the Hokage had arranged for several rooftop planter boxes to be built and gave Naruto a large number of seeds. Thanks to Naruto's careful tending over the Spring and early Summer months, Naruto had ended up with an overabundance of everything from carrots to pumpkins that he wasn't allowed to let "Go to waste". With nobody to give the spare vegetables to, you can easily imagine what happened, especially considering the boy's piss-poor cooking skills.

As a result, Naruto ended up hating vegetables, and avoided the rooftop planters completely until his apartment building was destroyed by Pein.

At least that's how it went in one timeline...

In this one however Naruto had someone to visit, and while he was visiting him, the Uchiha police officer returned, looking rather put upon for having to do so. This time, instead of being alone, he arrived with a slightly irate looking partner in tow.

"Mr. Nakamura, sorry to bother you again, but can you tell me where...Hey, zucchini! Mr. Nakamura, you don't mind do you?" The officer said, his boredom turning to excitement upon spotting Madara's walking gift basket which he promptly started to raid.

"Go ahead." Madara ground out through gritted teeth. The painkillers he was on prevented him from working himself into a properly murderous rage, and the pain the painkillers were keeping him from feeling too much kept him from getting up and going over there to teach the whelp a lesson in manners. The most he could manage at the moment was a severe, but somewhat disinterested anger, as he grit his teeth and clutched the sheets of his hospital bed in a manner that suggested that he'd rather have his hands wrapped around the throat of the bastard that was currently annoying him.

Personally, he didn't know or care about the ninja who was bringing him presents, but that was _**his **_gift basket dammit, and that little upstart had no right to go rifling through it taking whatever the hell he wanted. If he weren't lying here recovering from what that...wait, that didn't happen, he'd gotten clumsy and fell down some stairs. He'd probably been drunk at the time, since he would never be so clumsy otherwise. He couldn't wait until it was time to get his revenge on those bastards he'd once called family. The jerk who was now munching on a tomato he had taken out **_his_** gift basket would be the first to go.

"Where'd you get the vegetables pipsqueak?" the Uchiha officer asked the person who was bringing him the basket.

"I grew them." a very young, and bone-chillingly familiar voice replied.

"These are better than the ones down at the market. I am so going to make you my personal gardener when we take..." the Uchiha officer said.

His partner smacked him on the back of the head before he could finish his statement.

"...Take care of this stairs business. Right, this stairs business. Nasty business that." the Uchiha said, quickly correcting himself.

As soon as the Uchiha had finished denuding the gift basket because he was forced to get back to business to cover his little slip, the vegetable filled basket that was significantly lighter made its way to Madara's bedside.

"I brought you something, because that's what Hokage-jiji said friends do for friends when they're sick." the blond jinchuriki who had previously been hidden by the massive basket he'd been carrying said as he set the basket down on the bedside table, knocking the pitcher of water that had been resting there over onto Madara.

Kakashi's eyebrows rose as he watched the old ninja's heart monitor go absolutely nuts. He'd noticed the spike in heart rate when Naruto spoke earlier as well. Put that together with the "Stairs business" the Uchiha were investigating, and he had a bunch of questions he needed to ask Naruto later.

A pretty young nurse raced into the room shortly after Madara's heart rate shot to a dangerously high level.

"We so didn't rush in three shinobi medics to fix that collapsed lung of yours for you to die of a heart attack." the nurse said as she adjusted Madara's IV drip before turning to the room's other occupants.

"Out! All of you!" she yelled sharply, making several curt shooing motions.

By the time they left, Madara was once again unconscious.

That night, Naruto had somehow slept through the almighty row that had awakened a number of his neighbors in the surrounding area. When Naruto awoke the next morning, there was an envelope full of cash on his windowsill and his garden was practically empty, except for a chalk outline and a bit of crime scene tape that had been the result of a fight over the last of the lettuce. The cash had been there because Kakashi had taken up the impromptu role of "greengrocer" when the Uchiha had descended upon Naruto's little vegetable garden like a swarm of human sized locusts.


	4. Of Cooking Skills and Inarizushi

Danzo spent a relatively pleasant lunch hour skimming reports while eating a rather nice salad that had been made from vegetables from the Kyuubi Jinchuriki's garden after they had been thoroughly tested. The operative he had watching the young Uzumaki's residence had managed to snag the last of the lettuce while two rather elderly Uchiha were engaged in a fight to the death over it. Considering the ongoing feud between their respective lines that was quite legendary within the Uchiha Clan, this wasn't entirely shocking. While the young Uzumaki usually seemed to have inherited his personality entirely from his mother, bits of what he had inherited from his father would occasionally crop up unexpectedly to prove this untrue, such as the fact that the boy possessed his paternal grandfather's gardening skills.

If only the boy had his mother's cooking skills as well. There had been a reason that the Yondaime's favorite food was anything Kushina had cooked. The woman was such an excellent cook that she could probably get someone to happily eat poison if she prepared it. As the Yondaime had once said, Kushina could do things with a rabbit and some herbs that would make other rabbits want to commit acts of cannibalism. While his operatives generally couldn't get too close to the Uzumaki's residence unless there was a serious distraction like the Uchiha descending upon the boy's rooftop had been, observation through the windows had indicated that the boy possessed little to no aptitude in the area of cooking whatsoever.

Perhaps it was a lack of resources. One couldn't learn a skill properly if one didn't have the necessary tools, and considering the Jinchuriki's living situation, it was practically a given that he lacked the proper tools.

With that in mind, Danzo wrote out a list and called for one of his operatives who was familiar with such things.

"Purchase these and make sure they get to the Uzumaki boy." he ordered as he handed over the list and some money. Even when the day he had control of the village's weapon came, the boy wouldn't be on missions 24/7, and this would make him useful during his downtime as well.

&!&!&

Kakashi sat in one of his favorite trees contemplating the matter of Naruto's friend. There were two things about the situation that had seriously disturbed him, the first being the fact that the elderly ninja who was quite possibly an exceedingly elderly missing-nin had been in Naruto's apartment for an unknown purpose - he refused to believe that it was to tell Naruto he was his friend, as Naruto believed - and the second was the fact that the man had ended up in the hospital with three broken ribs and a collapsed lung after he'd "made a strange popping noise" when Naruto had hugged him.

Kakashi had questioned Naruto immediately after they had left the hospital, and quickly learned that Naruto hadn't knocked his "Bestest friend in the whole wide world" down a flight of stairs accidentally or otherwise. The truth was far, far more disturbing. Apparently, the man had shown up in the middle of the night - according to Naruto, the "Invisible person who lived in his underwear" (who was apparently Naruto's imaginary friend, which was in and of itself unusual since the boy hadn't been inclined to create one before) had told him that the old man had come to give him a gift - and had vanished shortly after making a "strange popping sound" while Naruto had been giving him a hug. While further interrogation revealed that the man didn't touch Naruto inappropriately or ask Naruto to touch him inappropriately, it had also revealed that the man hadn't really been there long enough to do so, which meant that that possible motive for the man's visit couldn't entirely be ruled out.

A quick check had confirmed that the popping noise the man had made while Naruto had been hugging him hadn't been that of a shadow clone dispelling. And, hadn't that been disturbing.

&!&!&

When Naruto came home from visiting the hospital again - when the nurse wouldn't allow him to visit Madara's room, he took the "Invisible Underpants Man" (as Naruto had dubbed the Kyuubi)'s advice and sat outside Madara's window for a few hours so his friend "would know that he was there for him" - he found that someone had left alot of presents for him in his kitchen. On top of a massive pile of boxes that contained a wide variety of cookware and utensils was a pile of books on cooking which included a few how to manuals, and a bunch of cookbooks ranging from the "Shinobi's field cooking guide" to some of the more exotic gourmet ones. All of them were above Naruto's current reading level.

The Kyuubi - who had healed injuries related to the fifteen times Naruto had burned rice while trying to cook it and knew that the kid had inherited his father's cooking skills rather than Kushina's (who had only burned the rice twice in her lifetime) - laughed at the sight of this, and at the boy's naive assumption that Madara had sent the cooking supplies. The Kyuubi had a sneaking suspicion that one of the wealthier Uchiha had remembered Kushina's cooking skills and had decided that he or she was going to make Naruto their personal chef after they "Took care of the stairs problem".

Seeing that bastard Madara laid up in the hospital was amusing. Hearing him go nuts because he could feel the brat's presence, but couldn't see him since the curtains had been drawn had been downright laugh-worthy. He was finding "human style" revenge to be refreshingly entertaining. Normally when he wanted revenge on something it was: scream, snap, crunch, and done, whether it be a small furry animal or a major metropolis. Humans however, humans drew it out to such a length that even the most sadistic of cats were jealous of how the nearly furless creatures toyed with their prey.

The vague cravings he'd had for inarizushi - which he found rather incomprehensible since he normally couldn't care less about human food - when he was under Madara's control gave him an idea.

**"Hey Brat."** the Kyuubi said to get his jailer's attention.

"What?" Naruto asked, not even looking up from the full color picture in one of the new cookbooks.

**"Friends often cook for each-other to show how much they care." **the Kyuubi said, barely holding in an evil laugh.

&!&!&

As Madara was about to zonk out once again from the drugs he'd been given, a nurse walked in holding a box.

The nurse had only delivered the box because she was curious about what the Fox Brat would give to the mystery patient who had apparently forgotten why casting Genjutsu while under the influence of painkillers - or any form of drug for that matter - was a bad idea. The results of trying to look at this particular patient were...interesting to say the least. Nakamura - or rather Uchiha as at least two of the doctors had surmised based his bone structure and his ability to hold up the Genjutsu while only half conscious - Tobi was shaping up to be the most "Interesting" patient the hospital had had in a long time.

The box which bore a tag that said "To: my bestest friend in the whole wide world, From: Naruto", turned out to contain several burned objects that were barely recognizable as possibly being food. Madara prodded at the blackened lumps inside the box. They had an unusually rubbery texture, and now that he thought about it, they smelled kinda familiar under the stench of scorched food. It was with dawning horror that he realized exactly what they were.

They were absolute sacrilege, and considering the recipe, shouldn't even be possible.

There was inarizushi, and there were these things that didn't belong anywhere near the same thought as that heavenly dish.

The nurse left her patient moaning over the "desecration" of his "precious" inarizushi. Apparently, the Fox had tried to cook for the man and had epically failed. When she got back to the nurses' station, she had a laugh with her coworkers over the irony of the Fox Brat _giving_ someone inarizushi.


	5. Early CheckOut

The Root operative that was stationed outside of Uzumaki Naruto's apartment building watched as the subject of his surveillance got up at the crack of dawn and started a small kitchen fire as he tried to cook an egg. Morning as usual at the Uzumaki residence, except for the fact that the pan and the spatula were brand-new, and worth almost as much as the stove that Naruto had been trying to cook the egg on had been when it was new.

While it wasn't his place to question Danzo-sama's decisions, he was beginning to wonder if the purchases that had been made the day before had been a waste of resources. But then again, one could not effectively use the best tools for one's task if one was not taught how to do so.

Perhaps cooking lessons were in order...

He would place a suggestion in his next report. Hopefully it would be well received. The last time someone's report regarding the Uzumaki boy had displeased Danzo-sama, they had been sent to the secure wing of the infirmary, which was a place no Root operative ever wanted to find themselves.

&!&!&!&

Madara took an experimental sip of the contents of the glass the nurse had handed him. It wasn't that bad actually...

One of the more health-conscious of the nurses had taken several of the vegetables that were left over in the gift basket the Jinchuriki had given him two days before after those damnable cops had finished pawing through his present and taking what they wanted, and had turned them into something called a "vegetable smoothie".

He'd contemplated escaping that morning and going off to tend to his wounds elsewhere after he discovered he was able to walk (slowly, and not that far, but he could still walk), but had decided to hang around for a while. Despite the Police wandering in and out, the constant visits from the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, and the pain, this had to have been the most rest and relaxation he'd had in years. After all, there were drugs for the pain, and he could occupy himself with the various ways he was going to kill his unwanted visitors when the time came when they became too annoying.

As he was finishing his drink, he heard the sound of pounding feet headed in the direction of his room. Based on the rhythm and the timing between steps, the owner of said feet was rather short and most likely a child. Eventually, the person stopped running and paused outside his room. An instant later, the door to his room slammed open.

"Hey Nakamura-san!" a familiar and very unwelcome voice yelled. "Guess what! The nurse said I could visit!"

Screw this, he was outta here!

He somehow found the strength to pull out his I.V., leap to his feet, run several paces, and take the standard shinobi exit from the hospital. It was on his way down that he'd realized that he'd forgotten to use Chakra to stick himself to the wall, and it was too late for the last resort of gathering Chakra to cushion his landing as one was supposed to do that before they jumped.

The landing wasn't going to be fun.

The landing wasn't fun.

The last thing he heard before he blacked out was a medic yelling "Nurse! Get a stretcher! Mr. Nakamura tried to check out a little too early."

&!&!&!&

Naruto sat in a chair in the hallway and waited to hear if his best friend would be okay when he got out of "Surgery", whatever that was. He hadn't looked very good after he'd jumped out of the window. Why had he done that? The Old Man had told him not to go jumping out of any windows until after he became a ninja when he got hurt doing so when he was four. Civilians weren't supposed to jump out windows, they could get hurt like he did.

He hoped his friend would be okay. He also hoped that the Invisible Underpants Man would stop laughing soon. He'd been laughing nonstop for over an hour.


	6. Lessons at Dawn

The Hokage who had arrived before dawn in the hopes of dealing with the massive backlog of paperwork that littered his desk before lunchtime stared at the request that was on his desk. At first he believed it to be a joke. After a conversation with Danzo who was also an early bird since he had taken that old saw that Hashirama-sensei had half jokingly tried to pass off as wisdom seriously, he was convinced it wasn't.

"Why the hell not?" he said with an amused laugh as he granted Danzo's latest request in regards to Naruto's training.

&!&!&!&

Naruto awoke at dawn to find one of the ANBU guys that always hung around standing in his apartment. Being rather tired because he had waited until very late for his friend to get out of that surgery place, he rolled over and went back to sleep. If the Old Man wanted him, the ANBU guy could carry him. That's what they were paid for wasn't it?

Less than a minute later, the ANBU guy poked him awake again.

He rolled over and went back to sleep only to have the ANBU guy poke him again.

"What?" Naruto snapped angrily the third time it happened.

"Danzo-sama has ordered me to educate you in the art of cooking." the ANBU guy said.

"Can't it wait until later?" he asked as he tried to roll back over only to have his blanket snatched away by the sadistic ANBU guy.

"I was ordered to give you your first lesson before you left for the Academy." the ANBU guy said.

"Left for the Academy?" he asked.

"I was informed that the break was over, and that today was the start of a new term."

"WHAT? !" he yelled. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"I would assume that they believed that you would be able to keep track of your own schedule." the ANBU guy said.

With a sigh and a growl, he got up out of bed and got ready for the day. The ANBU guy stood there and watched him dress, which he thought was very creepy.

"Now that you are ready, your first cooking lesson will begin." the ANBU guy said.

The ANBU guy then led him into the kitchen.

"We will now start on a traditional "Western Style" breakfast of pancakes." the ANBU guy said as he pulled out one of the books which had come with the neat cooking stuff his best friend had sent him.

"The recipe is here." the ANBU guy said as he opened the book to a certain page that was next to a picture of round brown things with butter and some brown liquid on them. "You will measure out the ingredients from the supplies I have provided."

He moved to the things that were on the counter even though he didn't even want to try the strange things that looked rather unappetizing to him. Nobody had been so nice as to come to his home to teach him things before. He would do his best, and hopefully the ANBU guy would want to come back and teach him more things.

He looked at the page that the recipe was on. He could only recognize a few of the characters on the page.

Using the solve what you know, and come back to the rest later method, he grabbed the two eggs he would need and proceeded to crack them open over the large bowl.

"You are doing this incorrectly." the ANBU guy said as he took the eggs from him.

"You start with this step here." the ANBU guy said as he pointed at something he couldn't read.

"What does it say?" he asked.

"Can you not read it?" the ANBU guy asked.

"No." he replied.

The ANBU guy closed the book with a sigh and a faint shake of his head before gathering up the ingredients for the "Pancakes".

"I will have to consult with Danzo-sama." the ANBU guy said before he hopped out the window and left.

Naruto barely restrained the tears that stung his eyes. That ANBU guy had been a jerk like almost everyone else.

&!&!&!&

Madara opened his eyes to find a nurse standing next to him.

"I'm glad you're awake _Nakamura-san. _It was touch and go there for a while, and we weren't sure you would make it." the nurse said. "Your little friend was worried about you, and waited for hours for you to get out of surgery. He said that he would be back to visit you as soon as you got out of the ICU."

He groaned. If he didn't have things he needed to accomplish, he'd be begging for death. Scratch that. He had that double of his, and that guy with that resurrection technique in his pocket. Let that little monster torture Tobi or whatever the hell that guy's name was now. He'd be getting his revenge, and his plans would be fulfilled anyways.

_Death please take me now._ he thought as the nurse set an orange hand-made card which was covered in orange glitter on the table next to his bed.

&!&!&!&

Meanwhile, back at the Tower: The Hokage chuckled as he signed off on reading lessons for Naruto.


	7. More Lessons, This Time Before Dawn

Naruto grumbled when he awoke to the sensation of someone shaking him. When he opened his eyes which were at this point facing the window he'd set his bed against before the Old Man had gotten him an alarm clock, it was to find that while there was a general and still rather faint lightening of the sky in the East, there was as of yet no sun. When he turned to see who had woke him up, he found that there was a stranger in his room. He knew all of the ANBU who loitered around his apartment by sight, and this guy wasn't one of them.

"I have been assigned by Danzo-sama to train you in reading, writing, and basic mathematics." the man said in a completely emotionless tone.

Whoever this Danzo-sama jerk was, he hated him already. It had been bad enough that he'd sent that jerk to him yesterday to give him a lesson and take it away at his first mistake, but now the man had gone too far. He had to get up early enough as it was, and there was no way in hell he was going to be dragged out of bed before dawn to do crap he could do at the Academy.

Grumbling several nasty words that he'd heard adults use in reference to him about this Danzo-sama character, he rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Tried being the operative word here, as the strange man who was supposed to be giving him lessons in the most boring subjects in the Academy, most likely to torture him, had picked him up bedcovers and all, carried him to the small kitchen area in his apartment, and sat him down in his chair at his table which was covered in workbooks, paper, and various writing utensils from pencils to the more traditional brushes that were used in calligraphy and on the more important paperwork like his lease which the Old Man told him he had to sign every year.

"We will begin by testing your proficiency in the subjects in which I am to tutor you." the stranger said as he opened a scroll that had been resting beside an ink stone.

The stranger then fiddled with the scroll which turned out to be a storage scroll like the one one of the Academy Instructors had shown the class last year before telling him that an idiot like him would never be able to make, much less use, something so complicated in a million years. He'd tried to get his hands on one of those things afterward, but they were too expensive for him to afford, and all of the ninjas he encountered had guarded theirs like they were made of gold.

He had started to begin thinking that they all contained gold or some similar treasure, right up until a pile of thick hard books that looked a bit like the Academy textbooks but with titles that had the words 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade and so forth in them popped out of the stranger's storage scroll rather than anything interesting.

"We will begin with this." the stranger said as he handed him a book with a title he couldn't read.

He swallowed nervously as he took the book, but after he opened it and flicked through several pages of complicated looking writing that was mostly Kanji, he found that the rest of the book looked like a picture book for babies.

"Read the first stories in these books aloud until you reach a point that you can no longer understand what is written." the stranger said as he pointed to the book he'd been handed and the stack that was on the table covering the math workbook.

After a bit of grumbling that earned him a smack on the head, he blew through the first story that was mostly pictures and a bunch of easy words. At least he thought he did, until the stranger grabbed all of the other books and put them back in the scroll.

"You have almost consistently mistaken A for O, SA for CHI, NU for ME, and NE for RE. How you manage to get the grades you do at the Academy is beyond me, since you should have consistently gotten a zero on all assignments that require reading or writing." the stranger said as he attempted to pinch the bridge of his nose through his mask.

"Though I am almost loathe to do so as it would most likely be a waste of my time, I will now test your writing skills." the stranger said as he set a pencil and a piece of paper in front of him.

"Please write about your favorite things." the stranger said.

&!&!&!&!&

"...The fuck?" the person in charge of the section of the Cryptography department that made the codes currently in use by Root said as he studied the paper he'd found in his inbox. Beneath what had to be the most incomprehensible code yet was the title Writing Assignment by Uzumaki Naruto, Consult the Academy for a Translation.

He took the paper down to the Academy, since this whatever the hell this was that he couldn't make heads or tails of no matter which way he turned the paper could be used to secure their lines of communication indefinitely.

"More of Naruto's homework?" the Uzumaki boy's current instructor groaned. "I'm sorry, I don't actually translate this. I usually hand it off to my drinking buddy Mizuki as an example of what I have to put up with every day. He's trying to become an Instructor, but due to that rumor about him and how his teammate died, they rejected his application. Maybe you could put in a good word for him with the Hokage?"

"I'll see what I can do." the Root operative said as he went out in search of this Mizuki character. Danzo-sama would either have to co-opt him or eliminate him as soon as he got his translation.

&!&!&!&!&

Sarutobi Hiruzen scowled at the mission request form that Danzo had sent him before rejecting it. He'd thought he'd done a pretty good job of teaching the boy considering the small amount of time he'd been able to set aside for doing so.

"A mission to assassinate the person who taught Naruto how to read and write indeed." he grumbled as he lit his pipe and got back to the stack of A to S rank mission requests he had to sort through. He would be having words with his old friend about his sense of humor later.

&!&!&!&

Madara groaned as he set aside the Get-Well Soon card the little brat had left him. It was probably the painkillers and the concussion, but he hadn't been able to read what the little brat had written inside the card, something he'd only attempted to do since the last time anyone had given him such a card, it had been Izuna. Of course he hadn't been able to read that one either because Izuna had given it to him shortly after he'd gone blind.

And now, he was starting to remember exactly why he had taken his sainted brother's eyes.


	8. Madara and Tobi Best Friends For Life

Mizuki looked down at the piece of paper that the ANBU who had appeared out of nowhere while he'd been putting his groceries away, causing him to drop a tin of beans on his foot had just handed him. Apparently, the Demon Brat had written something that was threatening to the village, and the Hokage needed to know how big a threat it was.

"Sure I can translate it. Just hand me a bottle of Sake and a couple of beers." he said. Translating the Demon's writing was always easier when he had a few drinks in him.

An hour later, he was on the job.

"Ya shhee here." he slurred drunkenly as he pointed to a spot on the paper. "Da Demon always writes in the wrong direction, horizon'ly lef' ta righ' like ya see on some signs an' things 'steadda up 'n down righ' ta lef'. An' he always mixes up his As an' Os, and a few others..."

&!&!&!&!&

Madara had been getting some much needed sleep when a familiar Chakra presence slammed into his senses and immediately snapped him back to wakefulness. Praying that the childish ruse would work and that the brat would go away if he thought he was asleep, he quickly closed his eyes again before the boy and the nurse that was with him reached his bed.

"Be quiet Uzumaki-kun." the nurse was saying softly. "Your friend is asleep."

"Okay." the brat said in something that was a little less than a shout, and was apparently the brat from hell's idea of an inside voice.

That was it, he couldn't take this anymore. It was time to put the plan he'd come up with last night into effect. One of them had to go, and despite his advanced age and the fact that he would be going soon irregardless, it wasn't going to be him.

"Naruto-kun, is that you?" he croaked.

"Yes Nakamura-san!" the boy shouted excitedly, causing him to flinch.

"I have a friend in the forest named Tobi that I want you to give this letter to. When you meet him, tell him that it's from Madara." he said as he handed the orders for the brat's execution that he'd written up last night over to the boy. "If you do so, he'll give you a bunch of candy."

"Okay Nakamura-san, I'll do it!" the brat yelled as he snatched the note out of his hand and raced off yelling "Yay! Candy!" as he raced down the hall.

When the boy departed, he indulged in an evil laugh. He hadn't been able to do one of those in quite a while as he needed to be seen as a reasonable and semi-sane person by those who followed him. Since he was in the ICU, and he didn't want to disturb that poor guy who had burns over eighty-percent of his body because he'd gone and messed with with a faulty explosive tag, he indulged in a quiet one.

&!&!&!&!&

The day nurse from Pediatrics who had been making her way to the ward in order to start her shift paused, wondering if the doctor who was in charge of the ICU during the day had gone insane. The normally serious and taciturn man was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes.

"Is there something wrong?" she asked.

"I just found out who our mystery patient is." the man choked out through his laughter.

"And?" she asked. Speculation as to the exact identity of "Mr. Nakamura" had been the talk of the hospital since he'd been admitted.

"I'm reversing hospital policy regarding the Uzumaki's little visits. Rather than waiting for an order from the Hokage, we will be allowing the boy to visit any time he wants. After all, the kid, or rather that thing we're not allowed to talk about, is practically family." the doctor said once he finally got his laughter under control.

"But considering how Nakamura-san usually reacts to the boy's visits, won't that...?" she started, wondering why the doctor wanted to do something that while amusing to some degree was detrimental to his patient's health.

"Kill him? Yes." the doctor said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find my old friend Yashiro and apologize to him for some things I said eight years ago."

&!&!&!&!&

As Naruto made his way to the forest, he realized that Nakamura-san had given him his first name. He smiled upon realizing this. In such a short time, they had become such good friends that they were on a first name basis. He'd been told that that often took years.

Wait until the Invisible Underpants Man heard about this!

&!&!&!&!&

Tobi had been relaxing in a tree when a rather familiar looking blond child wandered into his section of the woods yelling his name. Today was his day off from training Itachi, and he was taking advantage of every minute of his break from the boy's moralistic whining.

"What do you want?" he asked as he dropped out of his tree and landed in front of the boy after making himself presentable, and pulling all of the twigs and leaves out of the long hair which he'd finally resolved to cut.

"Madara-san wanted me to give you this note." the boy said as he brandished the piece of paper he was holding.

"Well then, give it here." he said.

"Where's my candy?" the boy asked.

"What?" he asked.

"My candy. Madara-san said you'd give me candy if I gave you the note." the boy that he realized was the Kyuubi Jinchuriki said.

"I don't have any candy." he replied.

"Well then, no candy, no note." the boy said as he stuffed the note into his pocket.

He briefly debated on whether or not he should kill the brat. He ended up deciding against it. If kids started going missing, especially a certain blond child, people would become more vigilant and he'd likely be discovered, which would be bad for Madara-sama's plans.

In the end, he ended up deciding to follow the kid until he discarded the note, as the brat's screaming if he took the damn thing from him would have undoubtedly attracted ninjas. Ninjas, and awkward questions. Ninjas and awkward questions such as "Who are you?" and "What are you doing here?". He ended up following the boy the entire day.

Breaking into the boy's apartment was childishly simple, as was snatching the note from the boy's dresser without waking him. He opened the note and read it. It was orders for the boy's execution.

He wanted the brat awake for this...

"Now my little friend, it is time for you to..." he started, after he poked the boy awake.

SNAP! CRUNCH!

"YAY! I GOT MORE FRIENDS!"

Somewhere in the seal, the Kyuubi laughed. He'd been so focused on Madara, that he'd almost forgotten about that guy...

&!&!&!&!&

Madara had been fitfully dozing when a familiar Chakra presence hit his senses, dragging him to wakefulness. He opened his eyes to see what was going on.

"Nakamura-san." the nurse from the graveyard shift said when she noticed he was awake. "Meet Nakamura-san. He'll be sharing a room with you."


	9. Hospital Visitor

The Sandaime frowned at the report which had been set before him. Naruto was now visiting two people in the hospital whom he'd claimed as friends. Oddly enough, both Nakamura had ended up with disturbingly similar injuries on their admittances to the hospital shortly after meeting Naruto. Injuries that were consistent with being crushed.

According to the report he'd received from Kakashi, the new Mr. Nakamura had made a popping sound upon being hugged by Naruto that had been nearly identical to the one that the first Mr. Nakamura had made when Naruto had hugged him. He'd known that Naruto could hug someone hard enough that they had trouble breathing, as he'd been on the wrong side of one of those hugs before, but he hadn't known that Naruto had been capable of doing something to this degree. He would have to have a talk with the boy about the use of a proper amount of force before some disaster befel an innocent that Naruto cared for such as him.

He wasn't too concerned about the tragedies that had befallen either Nakamura, as they had obviously been in Naruto's apartment for nefarious purposes. Perhaps their experiences would serve as a deterrent against further instances of trespassing from either them or those who learned of their experience. He should probably put a sign up on the building, "All Trespassers Will Be Declared Naruto's Friend".

He looked down at the scroll that had "magically" appeared on his desk courtesy of a Root ANBU with a slightly faulty concealment Genjutsu. If he hadn't laid off of a certain weed that grew wild in the nearby forest years ago, he would have sworn that he'd been hallucinating when the flowering shrub appeared in his office and snuck towards his desk.

"Thank you Shin." he said as he opened Danzo's latest missive. "I won't be mentioning your little Genjutsu malfunction to your boss."

The Lilac bush slumped in relief before doing an about face and slithering out of his office.

The scroll turned out to be request from Danzo to be allowed to take over the rest of Naruto's training since he'd "been doing so much of it already".

He sent back a reply telling him on no uncertain terms, the answer was **NO**, and that if he tried anything, he would tell Naruto who his generous benefactor was, and that he was another friend of his.

&!&!&!&!&

Tobi groaned as he awoke to a loud "Okay, I'll be quiet." that sounded familiar for some reason. The last thing he could clearly remember before crawling to the civilian hospital since the Shinobi one did thorough checks on people's I.D.s and drugged and detained anyone they regarded as "suspicious" whether or not they were actually so had been falling victim to a completely unexpected attack that had come out of nowhere before he could activate his ultimate defense and allow his attacker to pass through him, leaving him unharmed. As it was, his ultimate defense was probably why he left the Kyuubi Jinchuriki's apartment alive.

He now knew why Madara-sama was in the hospital. He would not underestimate the Jinchuriki a second time.

"I made you some cookies as a get well present." the little blond menace who contained the most powerful of the Biju said when he reached a point that was between his and Madara-sama's beds. "The Invisible Underpants Man helped"

The little brat held up a platter of round discs that were a shade between a bit overcooked and "charcoal". Against his better judgement, he took one of them. He'd been trained from early childhood not to refuse food when it was offered, because sometimes you never knew where your next meal would be coming from.

He would have given the object that was probably only just on this side of edible by a very thin margin a cautious sniff, but he was suffering what seemed to be a head cold on top of everything else, and his sinuses were blocked, greatly reducing his sense of smell. He gave the thing a cautious nibble instead.

It almost tasted like burnt...peanuts.

He was allergic to peanuts!

&!&!&!&!&

The Doctor who was in charge of the ICU sighed as he grabbed an EpiPen. Had it been the other Nakamura, he would not have lifted a finger to help. He had lost the woman he had been going to marry to the Kyuubi, and the instant he'd realized who had been brought to his ward, and that the man had most likely been the one to turn the Kyuubi loose on the village, he realized that he had his chance at revenge.

Allowing the Kyuubi's jailor to kill the man by inches for him was very closely skirting the edge of "do harm". All he really needed to do was allow nature to take its course and "offer no help". The Kyuubi's jailor had as much reason to get revenge on the man as everyone else in the village who lost someone.

Both of the boy's parents were nowhere to be found, and as he had seen a belly button when the child had lifted that filthy shirt of his to wipe his nose with the edge of it, it was obvious that the child had been attached to an umbilical cord at some point. He, like many medical professionals before him, had been unable to find a birth record on the boy at this or any other hospital or medical center. Rather than leaning towards believing the boy to be the Kyuubi incarnate as he had been before he'd actually met the boy and watched as all of his gestures of friendship ended in disaster, he was now leaning towards the belief that the boy had been a home birth that had ended in tragedy during the initial part of the attack.

The Yondaime had needed someone to seal the Kyuubi into, and a child who had no parents to object could be considered the perfect vessel. Nobody knew where the Yondaime had found the child. It is possible that he could have picked him up out of the wreckage of his home on his way to the front lines. There were stories of children being miraculously found alive in the rubble a couple days after the Kyuubi attack, children whose parents had died in the same attack.

After casually walking over to the bed of the second Mr. Nakamura who was obviously an accomplice of the first as he both looked to be related, and were using the same name on their I.D.s, he jabbed the EpiPen into the asphyxiating man's leg. Soon, the anaphylaxis began to recede, and the man started breathing normally, or as normally as a man who had had several broken ribs and a collapsed lung upon arrival could breathe.

He had no idea what that man had been thinking, nor did he care.

After his shift was over, he was going to invite Yashiro out for a drink. The other man would likely refuse considering how long ago that bridge had been burnt, but he was determined to rebuild a bridge across the chasm that had widened over the last eight years, one plank at a time if he had to. In his pain, he had done his friend wrong, and this was his payment. He lay the blame for this at Madara's feet.

&!&!&!&!&

Itachi sighed. He'd been waiting for Madara at their appointed meeting place for over an hour beyond the scheduled time, and the man hadn't showed. He couldn't waste too much more time. He had a mission coming up soon, and the time he'd allotted for today's training was half over already.

Sighing once more, he turned around and headed home.

"...Swears that Madara is at the hospital under the alias of Nakamura." his cousin Yashiro whom he'd thought of as a kind uncle when he was younger as the man was five years older than his dad was saying when he'd reached the house and found him and his dad conversing on the porch. "He thinks that the guy he's got in the ICU was responsible for the Kyuubi attack. I know that it sounds nuts, but he really seems to believe it."

Madara was at the hospital? Well, that would explain why he didn't show up for training today. Considering the fact that his noble ancestor was very old, it probably shouldn't have been too surprising. He must have had a heart-attack or something.

He would have to go down to the hospital to visit him.


	10. Itachi's Arrival and Another Friend!

Naruto had been sitting beside his second bestest friend in the whole wide world's bed crying and apologizing for making him sick with his cookies and begging him to wake up when the stranger walked in. While he was certain he'd never seen the guy before in his life, something about the man who was approaching the bed his second bestest friend who was only second bestest because he was the second to call him his friend was in looked familiar. He couldn't place why that was though.

"Uzumaki, what are you doing here?" the stranger asked when he reached the bed where he was staring down at Tobi-jisan with a blank look that felt angry and gleeful somehow.

"I'm visiting my bestest friends in the whole wide world!" he said. "I brought them cookies, but they made Tobi-jisan sick, and the doctor took them away."

The stranger looked stunned for a moment before he buried his face in his hands. It was then that he realized that he knew why the stranger had seemed so familiar.

Shit.

It was KitsuneANBU-san.

KitsuneANBU-san who had gotten caught in a prank he'd meant for that jerk KMPF officer who kept running across his window when he was half asleep when the man - who didn't look all that old now that he thought about it - had been doing his downtime village patrol. KitsuneANBU-san who had sprained his ankle when he'd landed in that dumpster next to his apartment building where some restaurant had been dropping their waste because they got their trash services cut off because they didn't pay the bill.

"I'm sorry KitsuneANBU-san. I didn't meant to fling you into that dumpster! Honest!" he wailed as he threw himself on KitsuneANBU-san's probably nonexistent mercy.

Madara-jisan started laughing at this.

"What's so funny Madara-jisan?" he asked.

&!&!&!&!&

Itachi, who had taken the Kitsune mask because nobody else wanted to claim it, and who'd had several subtle and not so subtle digs made about his choice of mask was beyond furious. He wasn't mad at the Uzumaki child whose traps which were a well known hazard in certain circles, he was furious at the men who lay on the hospital beds in front of him. That son of a bitch who had been training him for his coming task - which he could not refuse without getting the one person he cared about above all others killed - had been playing him all along. Any promises that man made under the name "Uchiha Madara" were less than worthless. He'd had a feeling that that man would have kept those promises for only as long as he lived rather than as long as the man whose name was apparently Tobi lived, and that the instant he was dead all bets would be off. But, to know that there was nothing securing those promises which had been falsely made...

He was no match for this "Tobi". Or, at least he normally wasn't...

"Naruto, please go to another room. I wish to speak with your friends alone for a bit." he said to the innocent child who believed them to be his friends for some strange reason.

When the Uzumaki boy who was the same age as his brother - give or take a few months - had left the room, he moved to the unconscious Tobi's bed intending to strike a lethal blow.

"You are aware that I have other agents besides Tobi, are you not?" Madara said as he raised his hand for the blow that would send the bastard who had played him to the afterlife. "Agents who, unlike Tobi, are not and will not be my representatives in the living world after I pass on."

He lowered his hand, knowing a threat when he'd heard one.

"Any promises Tobi made using my name will be good for as long as you live." Madara said. "Here's to hoping that you live a long time. But, I heard that you're ill. Some sort of wasting disease that takes several years to rather painfully destroy your lungs, if I remember correctly. Such a pity."

He stood there silently fuming. The only way that it might be possible to keep Konoha safe for a time, to keep Sasuke safe for a time, was to stay his hand, no matter how loathe he was to do so. Aside from this Tobi that he'd mistakenly believed was Madara himself, Madara had a number of powerful S-ranked missing-nin with grudges against Konoha on his team.

It was possible to kill both of the old men right here and right now while they were weak. They weren't invincible, just very hard to kill. The Uzumaki child had landed the both of them, which included Tobi who he had yet to land a blow on outside of a spar, in the hospital. But, killing the two old men wouldn't do him any good as odds were that they had contingency orders that would be carried out upon their demise. There were probably explosive seals that would be triggered by their deaths set in key places as well, as they didn't strike him as the sort who were very trusting of others.

How had the Uzumaki boy who was by all accounts a terrible Academy student managed to land Madara and Tobi who could make himself intangible at will in the hospital in the first place?

"Much to my misfortune, the Uzumaki boy takes after his mother to a degree. The first time I tried to remove the Kyuubi from the girl, Tobi's predecessor suffered a rather unfortunate demise. Let's just say that the girl somehow got a rather twisted idea of what love was somewhere along the line, and had mistaken some rather interesting books for romance novels in her youth. I'm amazed your Yondaime survived as long as he did as her 'boyfriend'." Madara said shuddering at what was obviously an unpleasant memory, having obviously followed the trail of his thoughts. "Catching the child by surprise when he was at his most vulnerable didn't go quite as planned."

That sounded as if there were an interesting story behind it, and he would love to hear anything that had caused Madara pain right now. The man had sensed his desire however, and refused to elaborate any further.

&!&!&!&!&

While Itachi was in the ICU having a discussion with Madara as Tobi lay unconscious in the next bed, Naruto was out in the hallway playing with a shuriken he'd picked up somewhere and a rubber band. He'd invented a game where he used the rubber band to launch the shuriken so it ricocheted off of the radiator and ended up in the wall he was leaning against. Most of the time, the shuriken had ended up in the wall above the radiator or on the floor, but he'd scored two hits.

Trying for a third, he snapped the rubber band. The shuriken went flying, bounced off the radiator, and there was suddenly a yell of "Ow! Sonuva...!". He looked up to find the source of the yell and saw one of the Uchiha Police guys pulling his shuriken out of his leg.

"Is this yours?" the man asked as he held the shuriken out.

The look the man gave him went way beyond the looks the villagers gave him. It was full of hatred and fury rather than disdain and dislike. It was almost as if the man wanted to kill him and was only barely holding back.

"Father, is there a problem?" KitsuneANBU-san asked as he came out of the ward Madara-san and Tobi-san were in.

"No, there's no problem at all." the angry Uchiha Police guy said in a tone that sounded beyond pissed. "Me and my little friend here were just having a nice chat."

Naruto stood torn. On the one hand, the man looked like he hated him and was very angry with him. But, on the other hand, he'd said he was his friend. Maybe he was his friend, but he was angry with him because he injured him with his shuriken. He'd be mad too if someone injured him with a shuriken. That had to be it.

"Sorry Friend-san!" he said as he launched himself at the Uchiha Police guy who was his third bestest friend in the whole wide world. "I didn't mean to hurt you with the shuriken."

"Please forgive me!" he said as he hugged his new friend as tight as he could.

His new friend made the same popping sound that Nakamura Madara, and Nakamura Tobi had made before they had left him to go to the hospital.


	11. Uchiha Drama

Itachi stood there watching in shock as his father was taken away to be rushed into the nearest operating room by a number of stunned doctors who had bandied about terms like pneumothorax and hemopneumothorax as they diagnosed his father's condition. The shock was surprisingly replaced by concern, which had startled him considering the fact that he would have been killing his father himself soon, and would be before the week was out if his father survived the surgery.

Looking to his left, he saw that the Uzumaki child who had been the cause of his father's condition was pale and shaking. The poor boy hadn't realized what he had done when he had hospitalized Tobi and Madara, and was in too much shock to process what he had just done to the head of the traitorous Uchiha Clan. The child had only intended to apologize to his father who he saw as a friend despite the fact that he was an enemy, and had ended up hurting him instead. Feeling pity for the poor boy, he gathered him in his arms like he used to do to Sasuke before his younger brother had decided he was too old to be held, and sat down with him on his lap. As soon as he sat down, the boy leaned against him and started crying.

It was at that point that Yashiro and Tekka arrived with his mother and his brother. All of them looked rather concerned, and they stared at him in stunned surprise when they saw who he was holding. Apparently, word of how his father had gotten into his current condition had gotten out already. He didn't want the Uzumaki child to be blamed for an accident that probably could have been prevented if the Hokage had spoken with the boy earlier. Naruto had never intended to harm his father who was pretty much a walking dead man anyways. How was he going to spin this so the child's situation didn't become worse than it already was?

"The result of Naruto's actions was unintentional." he said, before wracking his brains for a plausible sounding lie. "It's been kept a secret that when Naruto was younger, someone tried to smother the boy, disguising their actions as an act of affection. The person then convinced the Uzumaki child that the tighter you hold someone, the more you show them that you care for them. Naruto's attempts at showing father how much he admired him and how sorry he was for a minor injury he'd accidentally caused ended up turning out somewhat tragic as a result."

Yashiro, Tekka, and his little brother turned rather pale at this, and his mother looked somewhat stricken before she raced towards him. He moved to defend Naruto from his mother's wrath only to be surprised when the woman pulled the boy out of his lap and onto her own.

"You poor dear." she said as she cradled the still crying blond in her arms. "Shh, shh. It's okay. It's okay. I know you didn't mean to. It's okay."

Yashiro, Tekka, and Sasuke looked as if they wanted to defend mother from Naruto in case the boy tried to show her any affection, but from the looks of things, the child looked almost too scared to touch anyone.

&!&!&!&!&!&

Sasuke stared at the blond kid his mother was hugging. He found it neat that the other kid had thought his dad was super-awesome like he did. What he didn't find neat was what happened to his dad because the blond kid had thought his dad was super-awesome. His dad was in the hospital and might die.

He didn't want the boy to think he was super-awesome.

Yep. He would probably live a long and happy life if the kid thought he was as lame as a bunch of the clan seemed to think he was since he couldn't match up to Itachi-nii.

He was sure glad that the kid wasn't in his class. A bunch of the other kids in his class seemed to think he was cool because he was so good at doing things.

&!&!&!&!&

When Fugaku woke up after several hours of surgery and a good eighteen hours of restorative sleep, the first words out of his wife's mouth hadn't been about how glad she was that he was alive.

"Don't you dare glare at that poor child!" his wife had snapped upon seeing the expression on his face when he had seen what was curled up in is wife's lap.

The monstrous offspring of that red haired harridan his wife had been fond of had wormed his way into the woman's heart. This was not good. The thing that that child contained had brought his clan no end of misery over the last eight years, as he had watched their political capital dry up and their friends amongst the other clans turn against them. Having anyone in his family or his clan display open affection for the child would simply cause even more problems. Problems he didn't need, especially this close to Zero Hour.

The blond creature turned to look at him. He looked like someone had put him through a wringer.

"I'm sorry I hurt you Uchiha-san." the boy said in a most pathetic tone, starting to cry. "I didn't mean to. Please forgive me."

His scowl deepened as an immense hatred for the Kyuubi's jailor rose up within him and threatened to consume him. Vengeance would be his, and it would be slow and painful.

"He hates me!" the boy wailed. "It's all my fault, if I hadn't..."

"Shh, shh. He doesn't hate you." his wife said as she comforted the boy.

"You don't hate Naruto now, do you honey?" his wife said in a tone he had learned to obey long ago.

She didn't use that tone very often, usually preferring to defer to his decisions, but when she did, he knew very well to watch out. If he said one word about his hatred for that blond abomination, odds were that the doctors would be back in the room less than two minutes after that utterance, and he'd be back in surgery. This time to have his balls reattached.

"No." he rasped despite the pain that it caused him.

&!&!&!&!&

In his little cage behind a certain seal, the Kyuubi laughed. Things were going far better than he could have dreamed they would. He had begun getting his revenge on Uchiha Madara following the Uzumaki Kushina method, and he had ensnared two more victims as well. Not only was that bastard Tobi who had briefly freed him from his prison in order to enslave him under his claw metaphorically speaking, but the current head of that accursed clan of Sharingan wielders was as well.

To make things better, his current prison had completely unintentionally caused a rift in the Clan Head's household.

&!&!&!&!&

Uchiha Yashiro hummed to himself as he walked towards the next patient's room. He had decided to volunteer at the civilian hospital on his day off. The fact that this day was the day one Uchiha Madara and his partner in crime had been deemed stable enough to be released from the ICU was merely coincidence.

The nurse smiled in relief when he had taken over one of the more unpleasant tasks for her.

There was a crash, and a splash, and an enraged howl from Madara's bed.

"Whoops, I seem to have dropped a bedpan." he said.

"Don't worry," the nurse said tightly, looking extremely peeved with him."I'll clean that up."

"No, allow me. It was my mistake, so I'll fix it." he said with a smile.

If that smile was somewhat evil, alright, downright diabolical, the nurse didn't comment on it.

"Okay, I'll leave you to it!" the nurse said cheerfully as she left the room.


	12. Things Get Serious

Itachi sighed. He'd sat and thought long and hard about his abilities and the abilities of the rest of his clan put together, and compared the two. Without the much more powerful and experienced "Tobi" and the cover he would provide, he would not be able to carry out his orders. There was only one thing left to do...

He would throw himself upon the mercy of the Hokage and pray that the man would allow his brother to live.

&!&!&!&!&

"Goddamnit Danzo." The Hokage groaned as Itachi bowed low on the carpet before him begging him for mercy for being unable to carry out orders that he hadn't given.

He should not have had the council hand out the mission assignments while he was getting over that head cold. He had known that they would slide a few things past him, but this...

He knew that removing the entire family of a traitor from the oldest grandfather to the youngest newborn was historically the traditional punishment for treason, but times had moved on since then, and society had changed. Such punishments for treason hadn't happened in Fire Country for more than sixty years. The last time being a branch of the Senju Clan who had tried to make war on the Uchiha as they had been as wary of the current peace as Uchiha Madara had been before he'd left.

Konoha could not afford to do such things, especially to such a valuable - albiet shunned - clan. The potential response of the other clans after the massacre had been carried out had been one of the reasons he'd been against Danzo's idea of a complete massacre. While Danzo's idea of killing off the Uchiha who some knew were planning to take over the village and others had suspected were planning to take over the village for Konoha's safety had merit as it would send a strong message to any other groups who were plotting such, it was far too short sighted.

The Uchiha who were still remembered outside Konoha for their greatness during the Warring Clans era when only the Senju could be said to rival them were one of the big draws to the village for potential customers. If the Uchiha, who had a near legendary reputation on the battlefield, were brought down by only one of their own (as he doubted that Madara and his accomplice would claim responsibility since they seemed to be planning for some long game), it would call the clan's strength into question, which would then call the village's strength into question.

And, if that wasn't enough, when one brought the Konoha Military Police Force into the equation, killing off all of the Uchiha became an even bigger headache. While the KMPF had been slipping during recent times, partly because of reduced numbers of Uchiha courtesy of two World Wars, and partly due to apathy due to the fact that they were no longer appreciated by a suspicious populace, they did curb crime in the village to a great extent. If the Uchiha who made up the main part of the force died off, they would be forced to close, and the ANBU would have to pick up the slack during patrols for intruders, more than doubling their job load on what was supposed to be a downtime duty between more strenuous missions.

If the Uchiha died, he could not hand the KMPF over to another clan as the other clans would view it as undue favoritism and demand similar favors for themselves, threatening even more revolts. He couldn't leave the KMPF to all of the clans to sort out, because they wouldn't agree on anything, and it could spark a civil war as several blocs tried to take control of the police for themselves. Meaning an even further weakening of Konoha, which would have the same result as the Uchiha rebellion would have had if it had succeeded. World War IV with a side of complete annihilation for Konoha.

With all of the problems that the slaughter of the entire Uchiha Clan would cause, it was more trouble than it was worth. That was why he had nixed the idea of killing the entire clan, but had been in favor of killing those who were involved in the coup. Which, unfortunately, was most of the adults in the clan.

Had Itachi and his allies who had agreed to settle on the slaughter of all of the Uchiha rather than the annihilation of the entire village whom Naruto had placed in the hospital gone through with the act without informing him of his change in orders, it would have been a tragedy on several levels as he would have officially declared the boy a missing-nin and not have trusted any of the information he tried to send back to the village, rather than unofficially knocking him of the Hunt rolls and getting him in touch with Jiraiya. As it was, Itachi had uncovered a major threat to village security during the course of his duties.

Coming out of his musings and realizing that Itachi was still prostrate on the carpet, he ordered the boy to rise and dismissed him. When Itachi left, he sent orders for another ANBU. He would have to be there to comfort Naruto over the deaths of his bestest friends in the whole wide world later, but it would be worth it for the sake of village security and the continuation of Konoha. He would also be doing Itachi a favor, as he feared that it would completely break the boy if he were forced to kill his own father.

If Fugaku's experience with Naruto hadn't completely rattled the child, he would have ordered Naruto to give Danzo an extra tight friendship hug. As it was, he would have to make his displeasure with his childhood friend known. While he was a bit too "soft-hearted" at times, he did know what was for the best of the village. There were times when harsh actions could come back around and bite one in the ass, and often, those bites were much harder than the ones that were a result of being too soft. That was usually because the other party had good reason to get revenge.

&!&!&!&!&

In the civilian hospital, a nurse stood in Uchiha Fugaku's room filling a syringe from a vial. Once it was filled to her satisfaction, she quietly pulled the plunger back a little more. Then, she found a vein in an out of the way spot and injected the painkiller into her patient.

As she left the room, she heard the heart monitor go wild. As she walked down the hall, there was a loud screech from the monitor which caught the attention of every nurse and doctor on the floor who raced towards the room she had just left as her patient's heart stopped.

She continued on her way, she had two more patients to visit.

&!&!&!&!&

Tobi had woken up and turned to Madara-sama in time to see the nurse pull back the plunger in the syringe a little too far drawing in air. He knew exactly what that meant. With the condition he was in, he wouldn't be able to get to Madara-sama in time to save him.

While he was upset over Madara-sama's impending death, he knew that it wouldn't be the end. The Nagato child would revive Madara-sama later, and he would be able to show Madara-sama the progress he'd made towards the Moon's Eye Plan in the years that he was away.

Madara-sama's heart monitor went wild before screeching as Madara-sama's heart finally stopped.

When it came to be his turn, he had used his ultimate defense to allow the needle to pass through him without causing any actual harm. The nurse frowned at the ease in which the needle passed through his flesh before pressing down the plunger, giving him a cocktail of painkillers and air that passed through him as well.

As the nurse left through the window, not staying long enough to confirm her kill because there were a large number of nurses and doctors heading to the room to deal with the commotion Madara-Sama's heart monitor was causing, Tobi rolled off his bed and weakly crawled under it.

As soon as the doctors left, he would crawl off to find a place where he could hole up until he was well enough to travel.

He was somewhat disappointed that he wouldn't be able to kill of the vast majority of the Uchiha clan or destroy the village, as doing either would be exceedingly difficult with both on guard and waiting for him to show his face, but, neither the destruction or preservation of the village or the Uchiha were vital to Madara-sama's plans. Madara-sama had contingency plans for if the Uchiha should survive, as well as if Konoha were destroyed. While he would have loved to destroy both Konoha and the traitorous Uchiha who had turned against Madara-sama, he didn't have time to waste waiting for the village to become complacent once more, he had a Mizukage to manipulate and a Moon's Eye Plan to help complete after all.


	13. A Firing, A Wedding, and Two Funerals

The choice of painkiller that the nurse/assassin had made when giving her patients an air embolism had been a rather ironic one. The reason for this was due to a little known fact about a certain medication allergy amongst the Uchiha. Roughly two thirds of the Uchiha clan were allergic to the painkiller she had selected. When both Fugaku and Madara had died of the air embolism they had been given, they had already been dying of anaphylactic shock.

When the doctors arrived on scene to revive Fugaku and Madara, they saw signs of anaphylactic shock, and didn't look any further into the cause of their deaths as the cause had appeared to have been apparent. They attributed the fact that they had been unable to revive either patient to the fact that some patients don't come back despite being given CPR and having a defibrillator used on them. Rather than foul play being suspected in their demise, it was chalked up to an unfortunate medical mistake that had been made because Fugaku had removed his allergy alert band for some unknown reason, and nobody had been aware of Madara's allergy. Madara's survival in the hospital at that point had been because the hospital had been using a cheaper painkiller on him since they weren't all too certain about his ability to pay for his care. The nurse whose appearance the Assassin had taken was fired after witnesses had pointed out that they'd seen her in both patients' rooms around the time they died and that nobody had come into the rooms for a while before or after.

Normally, such a firing would have been devastating for someone who had devoted their lives to the medical profession, but in this case it had sorted out an internal struggle the nurse had been having with herself. With her firing, the decision over whether or not she should continue working or quit and devote herself to the family she had been thinking about having had become moot. While it was possible to maintain both a job and a family, she had seen what had happened to her own childhood when both of her parents who had worked long hours had come home too tired to spend much time with her and her brothers and sisters, and didn't want to do that to her own children, especially considering the risky profession the man she loved was in. The day after her firing, she proposed to her stunned ninja boyfriend who had been asking her to marry him for over a year. They were married the next week.

As a certain former nurse was preparing for her wedding, two funerals took place...

Many had initially questioned Uchiha Madara's planned burial next to the Shodai Hokage, right up until the Sandaime turned to them and asked them where they thought the last place Madara would have wanted to be buried was. At first, the initial answer the Hokage got back was "a dump", but then those who remembered the history of the founding of the village and the tension between the Senju and the Uchiha before the Senju had all but died out paused and thought about it.

Where would a Uchiha who had spent his life hating the Senju and plotting in the background to destroy Konoha not want to be buried?

Once they had thought it through, and realized that Madara's place of honor wasn't quite the honor it should have been, they softly snickered to themselves and stopped objecting to the Hokage's plan.

Standing foremost amongst the mourners at Uchiha Madara's funeral and interment was the only person in Konoha to actually mourn Madara's passing, especially after the Uchiha had heard how their noble former leader had been plotting their destruction. Well, technically, standing foremost amongst the mourners at the funeral, was the only two beings in Konoha who regretted Madara's passing. But, the being that was sealed inside of the other only regretted that Madara had passed on too soon and too painlessly for his tastes.

While the Sandaime Hokage gave a rather nice eulogy that most of the village thought was too good for the bastard who had set the Kyuubi loose on Konoha, and manipulated the poor lonely jinchuriki who now held said fox due to Madara's actions into thinking he was his friend so he could have him on hand to turn the Kyuubi loose again, Danzo had been forced to hold a crying Naruto. Unsure of how to deal with the situation, and wary of being hugged by the child as he comforted him in his grief, he patted the boy's head at what he thought were appropriate intervals, and pushed the child's arms down every time they started to come close to wrapping around him. He vowed to get Hiruzen for this if it was the last thing he did.

The next day, there was a mass funeral held for the Head of the Uchiha Clan, and the members of the clan who had strangely decided to commit suicide upon the passing of the clan Head. Amongst the mourners at that funeral was a certain crying Jinchuriki who was standing with the former Clan Head's immediate family, and being held by the former Clan Head's wife who was doing her best to comfort him. Sasuke, who hadn't objected to the boy's presence because Naruto had thought his dad was super-awesome and because his mother had told him that it wasn't Naruto's fault his dad died, made sure to keep the blond boy at arm's length at all times during the funeral. He didn't want to run the risk of the other boy deciding to apologize for causing the accident that led to the accident that led to his dad's death. Odds were, he wouldn't survive, as he wasn't anywhere near as strong as his dad had been.

After the deaths of Naruto's first two friends and the disappearance of the third, the boy became rather withdrawn. A number of villagers who found themselves pitying the poor boy who had been used by a villain who had toyed with his affections in a plot to destroy the village, did their best to help. Even some villagers who didn't pity the child tried to crack him out of his shell. In the eyes of the villagers, a quiet Naruto was a scary Naruto. As long as the brat was running around yelling, trying to get everyone's attention, and planning and pulling pranks, he wasn't plotting something else.

Time passed, and people finally managed to crack the boy's shell to the point where he was nearly back to his old self by the time his Academy graduation came around. The people who put in the most effort to get through to the boy besides the Hokage were the new Uchiha Clan Head, Uchiha Itachi and his mother who had practically adopted the child.

When Naruto had graduated, he had ended up on Team 7, which soon became commonly referred to as Team Double Dead Last. Why the team had picked up this moniker was because Naruto had been transferred to Uchiha Sasuke's class at the Academy when one Umino Iruka had been hired as an Instructor. Sasuke, who was still terrified of Naruto's displays of affection despite the fact that it had been years since Naruto had hugged anybody, dropped his in class performance dramatically, which had the side effect of resulting in every girl in class who had thought he was cool for being at the top of the class losing interest in him.

When Graduation rolled around, and the teams had been picked by a Hokage who knew more about the actual abilities of the graduates than the Instructors did as he'd been briefed about Sasuke by Itachi, a rather unhappy Haruno Sakura had almost violently objected to the fact that she'd been placed on a team with the two boys who tied for Dead Last rather than on a team with the Rookie of the Year Aburame Shino.

When Naruto had been asked by his Uchiha friends who had forgotten to mention his actual abilities to the Hokage how and why he'd ended up being Dead Last when he was clearly a match for the Aburame, Naruto had said that the ANBU guy who had taught him to read and write properly had told him that Ninja didn't show off their abilities until the last second when they would completely throw their opponent off making their defeat easier, and that a good ninja was always vastly underestimated by the enemy, when he'd asked for more interesting lessons that reading, writing, mathematics, and Konoha history. Naruto had apparently taken the lesson to heart after he'd seen that Uchiha Sasuke was apparently doing the same thing, and had competed with him for the spot at the bottom of the class, believing that the other boy was a completely awesome ninja.

During the invasion of Konoha which Orochimaru - who had been allowed to found his own village/lab by the Akatsuki whom he was still associated with - had been planning and working towards practically since he'd been forced to leave Konoha, Orochimaru had gotten his hands on a few of the Uchiha, completely ignoring Sasuke whom he'd believed to be the idiot reports had made him out to be. He subsequently learned that the Sharingan wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be when he transferred to his first Uchiha body.

Throughout all of this, Tobi hid in the shadows and forwarded Madara's plans...


	14. All Good Things Come To An End

Despite the numerous changes that had been made, the Fourth Shinobi World War had come to pass within the time frame that Madara had planned for. Madara had left contingency plan after contingency plan for his fake before he had died, contingency plans that Tobi had often been forced to scramble to implement in time. While the world had walked a few different paths in the years between Madara's passing and his return, everyone had reached the destination that Madara had wanted. The day of the penultimate phase of the Moon's Eye Plan had come.

As Nagato had turned traitor and died believing that the Uzumaki boy that Tobi had almost religiously avoided was the child of the Toads' prophesy which the annoying Sannin Jiraiya had had faith in, Kabuto had been forced to bring Madara back using the Edo Tensei.

A newly young and strong Madara soon joined Tobi on the battlefield, slaughtering all who were in his path until he had come up against the five Kages who had joined forces to bring him down...

&!&!&!&!&

Naruto felt like crying as he raced to join the battle in order to help out his Hokage. Despite being evil and wanting to destroy Konoha, Madara had been his best friend at one time. He was going to be forced to face either him or his Second Bestest Friend in the whole wide world or the both of them on the battlefield today, and he would have to bring them down. Knowing that he had to do this hurt.

**"Hey Naruto." **The Kyuubi whom he now knew for a fact wasn't named Mr. Invisible Underants Man said from the new prison within him that his mother had created for it, causing him to pause. "**It doesn't have to be like this."**

"But he's..." Naruto started as a new wave of pain over the fact that his first friend wanted to destroy his home and kill all of the other friends he had made since then hit him.

**"You do remember what Gaara was like when you first met, and how you turned him around don't you?" **Kurama asked in a reasonable tone that was quite unlike his usual threats. **"All Madara needs is someone to love him, and care for him, and be there for him, and show him that there is a different path."**

"But..." Naruto started.

**"Don't worry. You can't permanently injure your friend like you did without meaning to when you met him. Madara was brought back back by the Edo Tensei, which means that any damage he receives will promptly be repaired. Now go give him a hug and show him that you'll be there for him no matter what, and that you'll help him off the path he's been going down for so long." **Kurama said.

Naruto briefly paused, completely amazed that the Kyuubi had given him some good advice. It hadn't been the only time the fox had given him good advice, but he'd stopped giving it to him after his friends had died. For nearly four years, he'd thought that his invisible friend had abandoned him as well, but he'd met the Kyuubi again and realized that he would always be there. Upon realizing that the creature's advice seemed sound enough to work, he decided to take it.

&!&!&!&!&

Madara was having fun battling the Kages. It had been a very long time since he could let loose like this. Old age had slowed him down a great deal before he'd died, and his final days had been spent staring at the ceiling in a hospital due to an incident that...Had. Never. Happened. He would have to thank Kabuto for returning him to his prime and then some. As he was batting away an attack from the elderly Tsuchikage Onoki, he heard something that chilled his blood and sent shivers running up and down his spine.

"MADARA-JIIIISAAAAAAAN!" the last person in the universe he ever wanted to see again yelled as he raced towards him before flinging him to the ground in a bone-crushing hug.

Where the hell was Tobi? Tobi was supposed to be distracting the creature that was currently crushing his ribs to dust so that this wouldn't happen.

"...betogetherforever! Andever! Andever! Andever!" the monster in human form happily cried, tightening his hold with each ever, further crushing his ribs and squishing his internal organs despite the fact that he was wearing armor.

_Oh please, gods no! _Madara thought as he sought a way to return to the afterlife. Hell was better than this...

Inside his prison, the Kyuubi laughed.


End file.
